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(#litres_trial_promo) He enlisted Andrea to help him catalogue all his paintings and books.
Under the influence of Goldoni, Andrea also developed a strong interest in the theater. During the season, which ran from October through May, he went to the theater practically every night. He threw himself with enthusiasm into the raucous debate that was raging between conservative and progressive critics. Though Goldoni was twenty years older than Andrea, he enjoyed the young man’s company, regarding him not just as a promising member of the ruling class but also as a possible ally in his crusade in favor of plays that were closer to the everyday life of Venetians. In 1750 he dedicated his Momolo cortesan to Andrea, telling him he hoped that together they would “rid the stage of the obscene and ill-conceived plays”
(#litres_trial_promo) produced by his conservative rivals. With Goldoni’s encouragement, Andrea started to work in earnest on the idea of opening a new theater entirely dedicated to French plays, from Molière’s classics to the light comedies of Marivaux. The goal, he said, was “to improve our own theater … and lift the common spirit in an honest way.”
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While Andrea waited patiently for his turn to serve as a junior official in the Venetian government, his days were filled with his work for Smith, his new theater project, and the increasing load of family responsibilities being thrust upon his shoulders by his aging uncle. There was still plenty of time for evening strolls and gallantries in Campo Santo Stefano and Piazza San Marco, late-night discussions in the coffeehouses and malvasìe (wine shops that specialized in the sale of malmsey) and even the occasional trip to the Ridotto—though Andrea was never much of a gambler and went there mostly to meet friends and survey the scene.
Among his new friends was Giacomo Casanova, who returned to Venice in 1752 after his first trip to Paris. He and the three Memmo brothers were often seen together at one of the popular malvasìe, where they drank until late, played cards, and boisterously panned the latest play by the Abbé Pietro Chiari, Goldoni’s chief conservative rival. Andrea’s mother was not happy about her sons’ friendship with Casanova. She saw him as a dangerous atheist with low morals who was bound to corrupt her children, and she alerted the authorities through her political connections. It turned out that the Inquisitori di Stato—the secretive three-member committee that oversaw internal security—viewed Casanova much in the same light and were already compiling a hefty dossier on him. Indeed, the band of merry revelers was being watched by the few shopworn informers still on the government payroll, one of whom confidently explained in his report that what bound Casanova and his friends was the fact that “they are philosophers of the same ilk … Epicureans all.”
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In spite of his busy life and his many distractions, Andrea’s sense of duty to the Republic was so ingrained in his mind that he saw his passion for architecture, his love of the theater, and his knowledge of painting and drawing not as ends unto themselves but as additional endowments that he would put to practical use during his public service. It did not occur to him to seek a different road from the one his uncle Andrea had set for him. He clearly considered marriage from the same perspective. Before meeting Giustiniana, Andrea had enjoyed a number of affairs. He loved the company of women and from a young age was much in demand among his female friends—he was also quite a dancer, which helped. But he had had no great romance or lasting relationship. He knew and accepted the fact that he was bound to marry a young woman from his own social class and that the families would seal the marriage after long negotiations that would have little to do with the feelings of the bride and the groom. Everything young men like Andrea had been taught at home “underscored the irrationality of choices made solely on the basis of sentimental feelings.”
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Andrea’s world—rich and varied and challenging but also largely predictable—was suddenly shaken up when Giustiniana stepped into it in late 1753. She came from another sphere entirely, having just returned with her mother and siblings from London, where they had traveled to collect the family inheritance after the death of Sir Richard, her beloved father. During her yearlong absence, she had blossomed into a lively and very attractive young woman. The Wynnes had a two-year, renewable residency permit; they were not Venetian citizens and therefore, like all other foreigners, had to obtain a special authorization to stay in the city. They settled in a rented house in the neighborhood of Sant’Aponal and at first led a quiet life, mostly within the small English community.
Sir Richard Wynne had left his native Lincolnshire distraught after the death of his first wife, Susanna. He journeyed across Europe and arrived in Venice in 1735 “to dissipate his affliction for the loss of his lady,”
(#litres_trial_promo) as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, famed and restless English traveler disapprovingly put it during one of her many stays in Venice. He was soon introduced “by his gondolier” to Anna Gazzini, a striking twenty-two-year-old Venetian with a less-than-immaculate past. Anna had actually been born on Lefkos, a Greek island in the Ionian Sea, where her father, Filippo Gazzini, had once settled to trade, but the family returned to Venice when she was still a little girl.
Anna became Sir Richard’s lover soon after they met. Two years later, she gave birth to a baby girl who was baptized Giustiniana Francesca Antonia Wynne on January 26, 1737, in the Church of San Marcuola. Sir Richard doted on his daughter. He did not return to England, married Anna in 1739, and legalized Giustiniana’s status six years later. (The legalization papers refer to Anna’s father as “Ser Filippo Gazzini, nobleman from Lefkos,”
(#litres_trial_promo) but this belated claim to nobility had a dubious ring to it even back then.) Anna gave birth to two more daughters: Mary Elizabeth in 1741 and Teresa Susanna in 1742, known as Bettina and Tonnina. Their first son, Richard, was born in 1744, followed by William in 1745. A fourth daughter, Anna Amelia, was born in 1748 and died two years later.
Mrs. Anna must not have been much fun to be around. Perhaps to atone for sins of her youth, she became a fierce Catholic who dragged her children to church and pestered her Anglican husband endlessly to convert. She was a strict disciplinarian, bent on giving as traditional an education as possible to Giustiniana and her younger brothers and sisters: music, dance, French, and little else. Sir Richard was quite content to leave the upbringing of the children to his wife and retreat to his well-stocked library. As his gout worsened, he withdrew from family life even more. Many years later, Giustiniana remembered him sitting with a book in his favorite armchair “the six months of the year he didn’t spend in bed.”
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Despite his poor physical condition, Sir Richard developed a close bond with Giustiniana. They shared a love of literature, and he gave her the keys to his library. From a young age she read eagerly but with no guidance or method, moving randomly from travel books to La Fontaine’s fables to heavy-going tomes such as Paolo Sarpi’s history of the Council of Trent—a book the Inquisition had banned for its sympathetic view of the Reformation. Giustiniana was caught reading it secretly. From the little we know of Sir Richard, he must have chuckled at his daughter’s temerity. Anna, on the other hand, had a fit and threatened to lock Giustiniana up in a convent.
Sir Richard died in 1751, and the following year Mrs. Anna dragged her five children to London to claim their inheritance. It was a long, tedious journey. Many years later, Giustiniana would remember only the dirty hotels, the bad food, and “all those churches [in Germany] so heavy with ornaments.” But she loved London—“the parks, the noise in the streets, the pretty hats … and the general air of opulence”—and she would have gladly stayed on. “I had learned English well enough, was rather good at handling a fork, and was expecting to put my new skills to good use.”
(#litres_trial_promo) Mrs. Anna, however, was there for the money. When she finally got her hands on some of it, thanks to the intercession of the children’s guardian, Robert d’Arcy, Earl of Holderness, a former British Resident in Venice, the family packed up once more and headed home—this time taking the more pleasant route, via Paris.
Giustiniana was not yet sixteen when she arrived in Paris with her mother and her brothers and sisters. But she did not go unnoticed during her brief stay. Casanova met her in the house of Alvise Mocenigo, the Venetian ambassador. Forty years later, he still had a vivid memory of that first encounter. “Her character,” he wrote in his memoirs, “was already delineated to perfection in her beautiful face.”
(#litres_trial_promo) Giustiniana loved Parisian life—“the theater, the elegance of men, the rouge on women’s cheeks”
(#litres_trial_promo)—but Mrs. Anna was anxious to get back to Venice, so they made their way home, taking with them a French governess, Toinon, who was much loved for her skill in combing the girls’ hair.
The return of the Wynne sisters—“le inglesine di Sant’Aponal,”
(#litres_trial_promo) as they quickly became known—generated a certain amount of excitement among the young men in town. Sure enough, Casanova—who had also returned to Venice in the meantime—came knocking at their door shortly after they had settled in, claiming that he had fallen in love with Giustiniana. Mrs. Anna, aware of his reputation and keen to keep her daughter out of trouble, turned him firmly away. (In his History of My Life, Casanova claimed that Giustiniana then wrote him a charming letter “which made it possible for me to bear the affront calmly.”
(#litres_trial_promo)) Mrs. Anna had every intention of keeping her daughters on a very short leash, and Giustiniana, who was just beginning to enjoy the pleasures of society, discovered, to her dismay, that their life in Venice “had been reduced to a small circle indeed.” Much of their time was spent at home, “where we went on about Paris and London.”
(#litres_trial_promo) It was all rather glum.
The house of Consul Smith, one of the few Mrs. Anna allowed her daughters to frequent, was their link to the world. The consul, who had known Sir Richard well, was one of the most prominent foreign residents in town. He had seen the Wynne children grow up and had promised his old friend he would watch over his family and help Mrs. Anna sort out her finances. Palazzo Balbi became a second home to the young Wynnes, a place removed from their dreary house at Sant’Aponal, filled with beautiful objects, where the conversation had a cosmopolitan quality that reminded them of Paris and London. The consul, for his part, looked upon the Wynne children with avuncular affection. He was especially pleased with Giustiniana, who always brought a breath of fresh air to his house. “Mister Smith shared with me his love for his paintings, his antiquities, his library in order to enrich my passion for learning,”
(#litres_trial_promo) she later reminisced. One suspects he also rather enjoyed parading through his magnificent rooms with such a lovely young girl on his arm.
During one of her visits to Palazzo Balbi the consul introduced Giustiniana to his dashing young assistant. As soon as Mrs. Anna heard about her daughter’s infatuation, she became very anxious. Since the death of Sir Richard, she had lived in the fear that the respectability she had so stubbornly built up over the years might abate, leaving her and her family exposed to insidious and materially damaging forms of social discrimination. Her fear was well founded. Even in the relatively tolerant atmosphere of eighteenth-century Venice, many people still made a point of remembering that Lady Wynne was in fact the daughter of a “Greek” merchant. And there were lingering rumors about the amorous adventures of her youth: some even murmured that she had given birth to a child before taking up with il vedovo inglese—the English widower. Now she was a widow herself, living in a rented house with five children and with past sins to hide, and it is easy to see why she felt her position in society was so precarious—all the more so since she was in Venice at the pleasure of the authorities. Her residency permit might not be renewed or might even be revoked. So she had to act judiciously to maintain the standing Sir Richard had bequeathed to her.
However detestable her unyielding attitude must have seemed to the two lovers, it was certainly justified in the eyes of the English community. Consul Smith was fond of both Andrea and Giustiniana, but he was a practical man. When Andrea confided in him he sympathized with the lovers to a point. Nonetheless, he was very much on Mrs. Anna’s side. The few Venetian families with whom the Wynnes socialized also supported her—especially the powerful Morosinis, with whom the Memmos had a long-running political feud and whom Andrea detested. But her chief ally, as opposed as they were in character and inclination, was Andrea’s mother. Lucia saw, perhaps more clearly than the rest of the Memmos, the material disadvantages that a union with Giustiniana would bring to an old house which needed to reinvigorate its weak finances. And she feared the political damage the Memmos would suffer if her eldest and most promising son ever betrayed the family and crossed the inquisitors by marrying a woman beneath his rank.
The difference between the two mothers was that Lucia simply wanted to make sure Andrea did not get it into his head to marry Giustiniana. If in the meantime he dallied with her, as young men often did before settling down, it was no great worry to her and would not damage his future prospects. Mrs. Anna, on the other hand, was fighting a daily battle to prevent any contact between the lovers that might taint the family’s reputation and jeopardize her daughter’s chances of a respectable marriage.
Mrs. Anna was losing the battle. Andrea’s courtship was assiduous, visible to everyone, and highly compromising. He saw Giustiniana every day at the Listone in Piazza San Marco, where Venetians gathered for their evening stroll, and often later on as well, at one of the theaters. He frequently moored his gondola to the narrow dock below the Wynnes’ house and called on Giustiniana in full view of the family. In the winter of 1754 Mrs. Anna finally confronted him. She caused a terrible scene, declaring Andrea persona non grata in their house and making it clear she never wanted to see them together again. All communication was forbidden: letters, messages, the merest glance. It had to finish, she yelled—and sent him on his way.
News of Mrs. Anna’s dramatic stand traveled quickly around town. Andrea referred to the scene as his cacciata funesta
(#litres_trial_promo)—his fateful banishment, and the starting point of all their misery.
Mrs. Anna was a fierce watchdog, always on the alert and obsessively suspicious. She kept a close eye on her eldest daughter and did not let her go out without a chaperon—usually herself. Her spies were planted wherever the lovers might seek to escape her gaze, both within the English set and among Venetian families, and she kept her ears constantly pricked for gossip about the lovers. Venice was a small world. Everyone knew who was losing his fortune at the Ridotto on a particular night and who was having an affair with whom. Andrea and Giustiniana were aware of the risk they were taking in defying Mrs. Anna’s ban; they had to be extremely careful about whom they spoke to and what they said. At a deeper level, they knew the future offered little promise of an end to their difficulties. But it was too soon, and they were too young, to worry about the future. For all the trouble their love had already caused, only one thing mattered to them in the winter and spring of that year: exploiting every opportunity to be together.
Just as Mrs. Anna resorted to the Venetian arts of intelligence, Andrea set up a small network of informers to obtain daily information about Giustiniana’s movements. His chief spy was Alvisetto, a young servant in the Wynne household, who was not always dependable because his fear of Mrs. Anna was sometimes stronger than his loyalty to his secret paymaster. He had the unfortunate habit of disappearing during his missions, leaving Andrea flustered and clueless on a street corner or at the side of a bridge. “Alvisetto did not make it to our appointment and I went looking for him all morning in vain,” he complained. “Poor us, Giustiniana. Sometimes I lose all hope when I think in whose hands we have put ourselves.”
Alvisetto was also the chief messenger, and he shuttled back and forth between Andrea and Giustiniana with letters and love notes. Occasionally, the gondoliers of Ca’ Memmo would moor at a dock near the Wynnes’ to drop off or pick up an envelope. If Mrs. Anna was at home, the two lovers would fall back on “the usual bottega for deliveries,” a general store around the corner from Giustiniana’s home, run by a friendly shopkeeper. When Andrea’s message could not wait—or if the urge to see her was irrepressible—he would appear at the window of Ca’ Tiepolo, the imposing palazzo across a narrow waterway from the Wynnes’ more modest house.
Ca’ Tiepolo belonged to one of the oldest and grandest Venetian families. Its wide neoclassical façade stood majestically on the Grand Canal. From the side window of the mezzanine it was possible to look directly across to the Wynnes’ balcony. The ties between the Tiepolos and the Memmos went back many centuries. Andrea was a good friend of the young Tiepolos and especially close to Domenico, better known by his nickname Meneghetto, who was among the few to know from the start that Andrea’s love affair with Giustiniana was continuing in secret. Meneghetto was happy to help, and Andrea often dropped by after sending Giustiniana precise instructions. “After lunch,” he advised her in one note, “find an excuse to come out on the balcony. But for heaven’s sake be careful about your mother. And don’t force me to edge out as far as the windowsill because she will certainly see me.”
Andrea’s portable telescope was very useful. He would point it in the direction of Giustiniana’s balcony from a campiello, a little square, across the Grand Canal, to check whether she was at home or to find out whether she might be getting ready to go out or, best of all, to watch her as she leaned lazily over the balcony, her hair wrapped in a bonnet, watching the boats go by. When he observed her from such a distance—about a hundred yards—Giustiniana was not always aware Andrea was spying on her. “Today I admired you with my canocchiale [telescope],” he announced to her mischievously. “I don’t really care if your mother saw me…. After all, the rules merely state that I cannot come into your house and that I cannot write to you.”
From a purely technical point of view he was also within bounds when, thanks again to the benevolence—and the sweat—of his gondoliers, he came down the Grand Canal and signaled to Giustiniana from the water. On days when she was confined to the house and they had no other way of seeing each other, Andrea’s sudden appearance at her neighbor’s window or the familiar plashing of the Memmo gondola down below was a welcome consolation. “Come by the canal as my mother doesn’t want me to go out,” she would plead. “And make an appearance at Ca’ Tiepolo as well, if you can.”
They developed their own sign language so they could communicate from a distance during the evening walk at the Listone or at the theater or, later in the night, at the gambling house. “Touch your hair if you’re going to the Ridotto,” he instructed her. “Nod or shake your head to tell me whether you plan to go to the piazza.” These little signals sometimes caused confusion if they were not worked out in advance. They also had to be given very discreetly, lest they set off Mrs. Anna’s alarm bells. “When you left the theater,” Andrea wrote anxiously, “you signaled something to me just as your mother turned around, and I think she might have noticed that. If this were the case it could damage us, since she might also have noticed all the other gestures we had made to each other from our boxes.” Despite his occasional burst of bravado, Andrea remained deeply worried not just by what Mrs. Anna might have seen but also by what she thought she might have seen. He went to such extremes to avoid creating false impressions that he sometimes sounded like an obstinate stage manager. “You must realize that if your mother catches you laughing with someone she can’t see, she will assume that you are laughing with me,” he once said to her in a huff. “So try to be careful next time.”
Andrea fretted constantly about how dangerous it was to write to each other. If their correspondence ever fell into the wrong hands, there would be an explosion “that would reduce everything to a pile of rubble.” Still he deluged Giustiniana with letters and notes, often filling them with practical advice and detailed descriptions of his frantic chases around town. “We are completely mad…. If only you knew how afraid I am that your mother might find out we are seeing each other again.”
It was a glorious adventure. There were times when they managed to get close enough to steal a quick embrace in an alcove at the Ridotto or in the dark streets near the theaters at San Moisè, and the thrill was always powerful. “Last night, I swear,” Andrea wrote to his beloved the morning after one of these rare encounters, “you were so heated up, oh so heated up, such a beautiful girl, and I was on fire.” But in the beginning they tended to hold back. They made their moves with deliberation. They kept each other at a safe distance: lovemaking was mostly limited to what their eyes could see and what their eyes could say.
It is easy to imagine how, in a city where both men and women wore masks during a good portion of the year, the language of the eyes would become all-important. And what was true in general was especially true for Andrea and Giustiniana on account of the rigid restrictions that had been imposed on them. Andrea was being very literal when he asked anxiously, “Today my lips will not be able to tell you how much I love you…. But there will be other ways…. Will you understand what my eyes will be saying to you?” What their eyes said was not always sweet and not always clear. With such strong emotions at play, it could take days to clear up a misunderstanding precipitated by a wrong look or an averted gaze. One night, Andrea returned to Ca’ Memmo after a particularly frustrating attempt to make contact with Giustiniana. It had taken him all evening and a great deal of effort and ingenuity to find her at one of the theaters. Yet in the end she had displayed none of the usual complicity that made even the briefest encounter a moment of joy. In fact, she had been so annoying as to make him wish he had not seen her at all:
Yesterday I tried desperately to see you. Before lunch the gondoliers could not serve me. After lunch I went looking for you in Campo Santo Stefano. Nothing. So I walked toward Piazza San Marco, and when I arrived at the bridge of San Moisè I ran into Lucrezia Pisani!
(#ulink_d38da269-32cb-5424-ae19-c00026cae825)I gave her my hand on the bridge, and then I saw you. I left her immediately and went looking for you everywhere. Finally I found you in the piazza. I sent Alvisetto ahead to find out whether you were on your way to the opera or to the new play at the Teatro Sant’Angelo, so that I could rush over to get a box in time. Then I forged ahead and waited for you, filled with desire. Finally you arrived and I went up to my box so that I could contemplate you—not only for the sheer pleasure I take in admiring you but also in the hope of receiving a sign of acknowledgment as a form of consolation. But you did nothing of the sort. Instead you laughed continuously, made loud noises until the end of the show, for which I was both sorry and angry—as you can well imagine.
A few days later Andrea tracked her down after yet another chase along crowded streets and across canals. This time the reward was well worth the pursuit:
I caught sight of your mother and hoped you would be with her. I looked for you left and right. Nothing. Your mother left, I followed. She went to San Moisè, I went to San Moisè. In fact, I got so close to her that we would have bumped into each other at the entrance of a bottega if I had not been so quick…. [Later] I waited in vain for Alvisetto, whom I had instructed to follow your mother…. Then I got your letter telling me that you would be going to San Benetto, so I rushed over only to realize with regret that you had already arrived and that the opera had begun…. Oh Lord, what will Giustiniana say…. Let’s see how she will treat me…. Goodness, there she is, that naughty girl [who wouldn’t look at me] the other evening…. Will she look at me this time or won’t she…. Come, look this way my girl! … And little by little I began to feel better. And then much better when I moved into that other box because I could see you and you could see me so well and with no great danger that your mother might notice every little gesture between us.
As an overall strategy, Andrea felt it was important to convince Mrs. Anna that the love between him and Giustiniana had indeed subsided and that she could finally let her guard down. It would be easier for them to find ways to see each other. So whenever Mrs. Anna took her daughter to a place where there was a good chance they might see him, Giustiniana was to feign complete disinterest:
Sometimes, in taking risks, one must be willing to be la dupe de soi-même. So arrange things in such a way that she will feel she is forcing you to go to all the places where she knows you might run into me, such as San Benetto or the Ridotto…. And when the weather is nice, show little interest, even some resistance, to taking a walk to the square…. Believe me, our good fortune depends on the success of our deception…. To avoid coming to San Benetto, all you have to do is tell her you don’t feel well. As for the Ridotto, you can say, “In truth, Mother, it bores me too much. Besides, we have no one to speak to and I don’t feel like playing [cards]. And we don’t make a good impression anyway, walking around with no other company. So let me go to bed.” And if she refuses and takes you out with her, you will see me and she will say, “Giustiniana doesn’t fret about Memmo anymore.”
In public Andrea and Giustiniana behaved like two strangers. Yet if their relationship was ever to develop, if they were to make arrangements in order to meet somewhere safely and actually spend time together, they were going to need more reliable allies than Alvisetto—friends willing to take the risk of giving them cover and providing them with rooms where they could see each other in private. Andrea worked hard to identify those who might be most useful to them. He gave precise instructions to Giustiniana as to how she should behave to bring this or that friend over to their side. But his instructions were not always clear. When Giustiniana innocently told a potential ally that she no longer loved Andrea when in fact Andrea had asked her to say the opposite, he gave her a sharp rebuke: “As soon as I do a good piece of work, you ruin it for me. The truth is … and I am very sorry to have to say this, you have not been up to my expectations.”
Andrea could be equally hard when he thought Giustiniana was not keeping enough distance from possible enemies. He was wary of the young Venetian nobles who hung around the Ridotto and who delighted in gossip and intrigue. It was important not to give them a reason to unleash their malicious tongues. As a rule, he explained to Giustiniana, “it is good for us to have the greatest number of friends and the least number of enemies.” But there was no need to be closer to that crowd than was strictly necessary. And he criticized her when he saw her displaying too much friendliness to acquaintances he did not consider trustworthy.
He was especially suspicious of the Morosinis, who had always sided with Mrs. Anna in her battle against the two lovers—merely to spite him, Andrea thought. The Wynnes were often lunch guests at Ca’ Morosini on Campo Santo Stefano, and Giustiniana’s persistent socializing with the enemy infuriated Andrea. She had to choose, he finally said to her, between him and “those Morosini asses”:
I know it is a lot to ask, but I can ask no less…. I must put you through this test, and I shall measure your love for me by it…. Giustiniana, I shall be very disappointed if you disregard my wish. I have never met anyone so impertinent and so false toward both of us…. They like you merely because you amuse them…. By God, you will not be worthy of me if you lower yourself to the point of flattering these…. stupid enemies of mine…. these rigid custodians of Giustiniana who spy for your mother…. They are evil people with no human qualities and no respect for friend-ship…. Forgive me for speaking this way to you, but I am so angry that I cannot stand it anymore.
In the early stages, Andrea had a patronizing tone toward Giustiniana and a tendency to take control of every aspect of their relationship. He was, of course, several years older than she, and it was fairly natural that he should take the lead while she deferred to his judgment. But over the months she grew more confident in her ability to conceal and deceive. And in spite of Andrea’s occasional hectoring, she began to enjoy plotting behind her mother’s back. She took a more active role in planning their meetings and often marveled at her own audacity: “Truly, Memmo, I do not recognize myself. I do things I never would have done. I think in ways so different that I do not seem to be myself anymore.”
It was Giustiniana who eagerly informed Andrea that N., a friend on whom they had worked hard to bring over to their side, had finally agreed to let them meet at his casino, one of the little pleasure houses that were all the rage in those years and were Venice’s very practical answer to a diffuse desire for comfort and pleasure. (There were as many as 150 such casini in the city, which were used as boudoirs, as seditious salons, and—quite often—as discreet love nests.) “I’ve made arrangements for Friday,” she wrote self-confidently. “We can’t see each other before. I didn’t feel I could press him and so I let him choose the date. He has become my friend entirely and confides his worries to me and even vents his domestic frustrations.”
Their excitement grew every day in anticipation of the moments they would spend together. It was not enough anymore to exchange loving glances and signals from afar. If Giustiniana had become much bolder in just a few weeks, it was because her yearning was now so powerful. She longed to be kissed by Andrea, to be held in his arms. And their scheming was finally producing results. Here is Giustiniana, three days before their secret appointment at N.’s casino:
Friday we shall meet—at least we know as much. But my God, how the time in between will seem interminable! And afterward what? Afterward I shall think about our next meeting so that I shall always be having sweet thoughts about you…. Tell me, Memmo, are you entirely happy with me? Is there any way I can give you more? Is there something in my behavior, in my way of life that I might change to suit you better? Speak, for I shall do anything you want. I cannot think of anything more precious than to see you happy and ever closer to me. I never thought it was possible to love with such violence.
The following evening Alvisetto appeared in Giustiniana’s room bearing a reply from her lover. “My soul,” Andrea wrote, “what a complete delight it will be. Love me, adore me…. I deserve it because I know your heart so well. Oh Lord, I am so dying to see you that I am jumping out of my skin.” Alvisetto also handed to Giustiniana a small, delicately embroidered fan—a gift to make the waiting more bearable. In order to avoid raising Mrs. Anna’s suspicions, Andrea suggested that Giustiniana ask her aunt Fiorina to pretend the fan was for her. In the past Mrs. Anna’s sister had shown a certain amount of sympathy for her niece’s predicament. Andrea, always in search of reliable allies, felt this subterfuge would not only allay whatever doubts Mrs. Anna might have about his gift but also give them a sense of how much Aunt Fiorina was prepared to help them in the future.
On Thursday, the day before their meeting, Alvisetto delivered a long, tender letter to Andrea:
And so, my dear Memmo, tomorrow we shall be together. And what, in the whole world, could be more natural between two people who love each other than to be together? I could go on forever, my sweet. I am in heaven. I love you. I love you, Memmo, more than I can say. Do you love me as much? Do you know I have this constant urge to do well, to look beautiful, to cultivate the greatest possible number of qualities for the mere sake of pleasing you, of earning your respect, of holding on to my Memmo…. Be warned, however, that your love for me has made me extremely proud and vain…. Where does one find a man so pleasant, so at ease in society, yet at the same time so firm, so deeply understanding of the important things in life? Where does one find a young man with such a rich imagination who is also precise and clearheaded in his thinking, so graceful and convincing in expressing his ideas? My Memmo, so knowledgeable in the humanities, so intelligent about the arts, is also a man who knows how to dress and always cuts quite a figure and knows how to carry himself with grace…. he is a man who possesses the gift of being at once considerate and bold. And even if at times he goes out of bounds, he does it to satisfy the natural urges of his youth and his character. And therein lies the path to happiness. You are wild as a matter of principle, as a result of hard reasoning. Aren’t you the rarest of philosophers? …. And what have you done, what do you do to women? Just the other day N. said to me: How did you manage to catch that fickle young man? And I was so proud, Memmo.
As for the fan, she added, “I will ask Fiorina to accept it in my place. I don’t know whether she is on our side or not, but at least she seems willing to fake it.”
The morning after their meeting at N.’s, Giustiniana, enthralled by the sweetest memories of the previous evening, wrote to Andrea entirely in French—not the language she knew best but the one she evidently felt was most appropriate in the lingering afterglow of their reunion:
Ah, Memmo, so much happiness! I was with you for close to two hours; I listened to your voice; you held my hand, and our friends, touched by our love, seem willing to help us more often. After you had left, N. told me how much you love me. Yes, you do love me, Memmo, you love me so deeply. Tell me once more; I never tire of hearing you say it. And the more direct you are, the more charmed I shall be. The heart doesn’t really care much for detours. Simplicity is worth so much more than the most ornate embellishments. You are the most charming philosopher I have ever listened to…. If only I could be free … and tell the world about my love! Ah, let us not even speak of such a happy state. Farewell, I take leave of you now. When shall I see you? Tell me, are you as impatient as I am?
She added teasingly:
Oh, by the way, I have news. My mother received a marriage proposal for me from a very rich Roman gentleman…. Isn’t it terrible, Memmo? Aren’t you at least a little bit jealous? And what if he is as nice as they say … and what if my mother wanted him…. I can’t go on. Not even in jest…. I am all yours, my love. Farewell.
(#ulink_e2ef772d-65be-5e20-b7a5-de7d601648d6)In order to avoid burdening the general reader with repetitive notes I have not sourced each quotation drawn from the correspondence between Andrea and Giustiniana (unless otherwise specified), hoping that a short note on the various sets of letters, to be found after the text on page 293, will make it easy enough for readers with a bibliographical interest to know where the quotation comes from. The reader may also wish to know that in translating the letters from Italian into English I did my best to preserve their original eighteenth-century flavor, though I eliminated excessive capitalization and made changes in the punctuation in order to facilitate the reader’s ease and comprehension.
(#ulink_184ca770-3ac1-52fb-b16e-03340c4964d7)Regardless of political influence, twenty-four families were considered founding families of Venice, and of these, twelve traced their roots to early Christianity and called themselves “apostolic.” The Memmos were among these twelve.
(#ulink_a656c2c8-3041-5a78-a384-211e7d3425d0)Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois was published in Venice in 1749. Montesquieu himself had come to Venice to study its laws and system of government. He was run out of town by the inquisitors and legend has it that he threw all his notes into the lagoon as he made his escape toward the mainland. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also a familiar figure, having been secretary to the French ambassador in Venice in 1743–1744.
(#ulink_4c0746cb-bd4b-5d9a-b9a4-b9a695a0c07b)Andrea’s cousin by marriage and a close friend.
CHAPTER Two (#ulink_bfd71fff-2961-5a86-8edc-25acd0867beb)
Andrea and Giustiniana were so secretive during the first months of their clandestine relationship that only a handful of trusted friends knew what they were up to. As Andrea had predicted, Mrs. Anna eventually began to lower her guard and focus on possible new suitors for her eldest daughter. By the fall of 1754 the two lovers were seeing each other with great frequency and daring. They now had several locations at their disposal. N.’s casino was often available. Meneghetto Tiepolo had given them access to an apartment on the mezzanine of his palazzo. They also went to a woman named Rosa, who lived in a small and very simple house near the Wynnes and often let them have a room. Setting up a secret encounter was often the work of several days. It took reliable intelligence and good planning. Alvisetto shuttled furtively between the Wynnes’ house and Ca’ Memmo, delivering letters with the latest arrangements or news of an unexpected change of plan. Much was written about the dropping off and picking up of keys.
The feverish preparatory work, coupled with the constant fear of being caught, made their encounters all the more passionate. “How could they be so stupid,” Giustiniana noted with delight, “not to realize what refinement they bring to our pleasure by imposing all these prohibitions? [At the beginning of our relationship] I was always very happy to see you, of course, but the emotions I feel now, the sheer agitation, the overwhelming feeling of sweetness, were certainly not as intense.”
As their love deepened and their relationship became more sexual, jealousy too began to creep into their little world. Despite Mrs. Anna’s more relaxed attitude, Giustiniana was still not as free to move around town as Andrea was. This put her at a psychological disadvantage. Who was Andrea seeing when he wasn’t with her? She had his letters, of course, filled with detailed accounts of his daily activities. But how reliable were they? In her relative confinement in the house at Sant’Aponal she had plenty of time to work herself into a state of anxiety. A hint of unpleasant gossip was enough to send her into a rage.
One of Andrea’s best friends was his cousin Lucrezia Pisani, the young lady he had bumped into on the bridge as he was chasing Giustiniana. She was lively and attractive and popular among Andrea’s set. She often had interesting company at her house, and Andrea liked to drop by. His breezy reports on his visits there, however, made Giustiniana feel excluded. When she heard he was seeing Lucrezia more and more frequently on the days when they could not be together, she protested angrily. Andrea was taken aback by her attitude. Lucrezia was an old friend, he argued, an ally; she was one of the few who knew about their love affair. He reacted to Giustiniana’s indignation with even greater indignation:
What have I done to you? What sort of creature are you? What on earth are you thinking? And what doggedness! What cruelty! So now it would appear that I have been courting Lucrezia for the past ten days…. Well, first of all, the timing is wrong: she’s been in the countryside for the past several days. I would have gone with her. I chose not to. Meanwhile, I’ve been at home most of the time, evenings included. I’ve had lunch with her once. True, every time I have met her at the theater I have sat in her box…. But could I have sat alone or even with a single friend throughout an entire show? … I am mad to even defend myself. Yes, I like her company and I admit it. First of all because she is one of the easiest women to be around…. She is also witty, knowledgeable, clever. You can talk to her freely, and she often has good company…. Besides, she is your friend, she often asks about you with interest…. You are crazy, crazy, crazy. You will drive me mad with your endless suspicions. Still, I guess I must try to appease you in any case. So rest assured: I won’t be seen with her anymore. But where may I go? Anywhere I went there would be new gossip and new scenes…. By God, I will have to lock myself up in my room, under permanent surveillance, otherwise you still won’t believe me. But of course when no one sees me around people will start thinking that I’m enjoying myself even more secretively. What a life.
Giustiniana’s suspicions, however, were not entirely unjustified: there was talk around town that Lucrezia did indeed have a liking for Andrea that went beyond their old friendship. When Giustiniana’s mood did not improve, Andrea realized he would have to do something more drastic to placate her. He went about it in a manner that revealed his own penchant for intrigue:
This is a difficult thing to ask, but you are so easy, so free from prejudice, you have such a good spirit and are always so obliging with me that it is possible you might grant me this favor. Lucrezia torments me by always asking if she can see some of your letters to me—which I have never permitted her to do. Therefore I would like for you to write me a letter in French in which you praise her. You might add in passing that, while not jealous of her, you do think she is too intelligent not to realize that it would be preferable if I were not seen so often with her. She already knows all the love I have for you and your commitment to me. I assure you that the only reason I am asking you to do this is so that she will convince herself that I am in love with a woman more special than her…. If you’re not up to it, it doesn’t really matter. It’s enough that you love me.
Giustiniana was uncomfortable with this sort of game playing. A little deception to avoid Mrs. Anna’s controls and to meet Andrea on the sly was one thing. But she found his recourse to artifice for the sake of artifice a little unsettling. The ease with which he could transform himself from the most tender and loving companion to the craftiest manipulator was a trait that seemed embedded in his character. And whereas Lucrezia, an experienced operator herself, would probably not have given Andrea’s behavior great significance, Giustiniana found it much harder to understand. She too had a seductive side, a propensity to flirt with men both young and old. But excessive ambiguity made her ill at ease. She held fast to a rule of love that was not very common among other young Venetians: the exclusivity of romantic feelings. So she was stunned to hear, when she went over to the Morosinis’ for lunch shortly after the Lucrezia episode, that Andrea was also flirting with Mariettina Corner, another well-known seductress. Mariettina’s love life was complicated enough as it was: she was married to Lucrezia’s brother, had an official lover and was having an affair with yet a third man, Piero Marcello—a gambler and philanderer who happened to be a neighbor of the Wynnes’. Giustiniana was told that though Mariettina was carrying on the relationship with Piero, it was really Andrea she had her eyes on.
Again she confronted him, and again he blamed her for believing every scrap of gossip floating around the Morosinis’: “What are they telling you, these people with whom you seem to enjoy yourself so much? And why do you believe them if you know they hate me? You accuse me of making love to Mariettina…. But why is it you always fear I’m causing you offense with all the women I see?”
The story of Andrea’s presumed affair with Mariettina had all the ingredients of a Goldoni farce. It turned out that Andrea, at Mariettina’s request, had acted as a go-between in her secret romance with Piero. And Giustiniana—as Andrea was quick to remind her—had even encouraged him to take on that role because she felt that as long as Mariettina was busy with other men she would not present a threat to her. But Andrea’s comings and goings between the two lovers had provided the gossipmongers with plenty to talk about. In the ensuing confusion Giustiniana didn’t know whom to believe. Andrea acknowledged that “some people might well have thought Mariettina had developed an interest in me…. After all, I was constantly whispering in her ear and she was whispering in mine…. She talked to me, gestured to me, sat next to me while apparently not caring a hoot about [her lover], her husband—indeed the world.” He insisted it was all a terrible misunderstanding: he was innocent and Giustiniana was “stupid” if she bothered “to spend a moment on all this talk the Morosinis fill your head with.”
It wasn’t easy for her to dismiss the things she heard about Andrea, because so much of his life was invisible to her, out of reach. The rumors were all the more hurtful because they reverberated in circles to which she was admitted but to which she did not truly belong. Giustiniana knew or was acquainted with most of Andrea’s friends and was a welcome guest in the houses of many patrician families. But even though the veil of social discrimination was perhaps not as visible as elsewhere in Europe, it was very real; it governed Venetian society in subtle and less subtle ways—as in the case of marriage. When Giustiniana wrote to Andrea about his woman friends, there was often an undercurrent of anxiety that went quite beyond a natural romantic jealousy.
Still, she had her own little ways of getting back at him.
As Andrea and Giustiniana struggled to clear up the misunderstanding about his role in their friends’ affair, Mariettina threw one of her celebrated balls on the Giudecca—an island separated from the southern side of Venice by a wide canal, where patricians had pleasure houses with gardens and vineyards. This was one of the major social events of the season. Preparations went on for days. Young Venetian ladies had a notorious taste for luxury. They liked to wear rich and elaborate but relatively comfortable outfits, so they could move with greater ease during the minuets and furlane, a popular dance that originated from the Friuli region. They spent hours having their hair coiffed into tall beehives, which they decorated with gems and golden pins. Their long fingernails were polished in bright colors. They drenched themselves with exotic perfume and chose their beauty spots with special care (the appassionata was worn in the corner of the eye, the coquette above the lip, the galante on the chin, and the assassina—the killer—in the corner of the mouth).
(#litres_trial_promo) They carried large, exquisitely embroidered fans and wore strings of pearls and diamonds. High heels had long been out of fashion: Venetian ladies preferred more sensible low evening shoes, often decorated with a diamond buckle. These were fabulously expensive but very comfortable, especially for dancing. Men wore the traditional French costume: silk long jacket, knee-length culottes, and white stockings. Elaborate cuffs and jabots of lace from the island of Burano gave a Venetian touch to their attire. Their elegant evening wigs were combed and groomed for the occasion.
Mariettina’s ball offered a chance for Andrea and Giustiniana to see each other and clarify things once and for all. But Giustiniana, still feeling vexed by the whole imbroglio, was not in the mood for such a demanding social event. She sent this note to Andrea just as he was dressing for the evening:
If the bad weather continues I will certainly not come to Marietta Corner’s festa. You know my mother and how she fears the wind. She has warned that she will not cross the canal if there is the slightest bit of wind. In the end it is probably better that such a reasonable pretext should excuse me from coming as I believe you and I would both have a terrible time…. Still I will try to convince my mother to get over her fear—I hope you will acknowledge my goodwill. I have already opted for a new course: henceforth you will be able to do as you please; I will neither complain nor bother you with accusations. When you will cause me displeasure I will try to convince myself that you won’t have done so out of ill will but because you do not believe I am sensitive to those things…. By the way, all those pleas for forgiveness and that habit you have of carrying on exactly in the same manner even though you know you offend me—I really cannot stand it. The truth is, I will continue to give you proof of my real affection while you will hurt me more and more. And who knows if all my suffering will change you one day…. Good-bye now, Memmo. I would not want to keep you from your toilette.
In the end Giustiniana did not prevail over her mother—if she ever tried—and she did not go to Marietta’s ball. The next day she sent Andrea this bittersweet note: “I did not write to you this morning because I felt you might be tired after last night and needed your sleep. The bad weather prevented me from coming, but as I told you I believe in the end it was for the better. Today I was half hoping I would see you at the window at Ca’ Tiepolo, but I guess I fooled myself. This evening we are going to Smith’s. I will write to you tomorrow. I have nothing else to ask you except to love me much—if you can. Farewell.”
Andrea always reacted defensively, even impatiently, to Giustiniana’s outbursts of jealousy. He was not immune to similar feelings, but in the abstract he espoused what he considered a “philosophical” approach. “It is practically impossible for me to be jealous,” he explained:
Not because I have such high esteem for myself that I do not recognize others might be worthy [of your attentions]. No, the reason is that I don’t want to believe you are flighty or coquettish or fickle or careless or mean. If ever there came a point in which I really did nurture doubts about you … then I would simply think of you as a different woman. The pain I would feel on account of your transformation would certainly be intense, but to me you would no longer be the lovable, the rarest Giustiniana. And by losing what ignited my deepest love and continues to nourish it, I would lose all feeling for you and return to the Memmo I was before meeting you.
This was the theory. In reality Andrea was fairly quick to lose his cool when other young men prowled around Giustiniana. He was particularly wary of Momolo Mocenigo, better known as Il Gobbo—the Hunchback—on account of a slight curvature of his spine, but in fact rather good-looking and quite the ladykiller. “He was the handsomest of all the patrician gamesters at the Ridotto,” Casanova wrote in his memoirs.
(#litres_trial_promo) When he was not taking bets at his faro table, Il Gobbo hung around the theaters, where he bothered the ladies and tried to make mischief. He especially enjoyed gallivanting with Giustiniana, and her willingness to indulge him annoyed Andrea to no end. Once, after catching her yet again in “a very long conversation” with him, he let her have it: “Everyone knows Il Gobbo for the first-class whoremonger that he is. You should know he once [told me] in front of other people that I should be thankful to him because he chose not to seduce you even though you showed a certain kindness to him…. I refused to give in to such abuse, and I dare say my reaction did not make him very happy…. But why did you have to go talk to him without your mother? Why speak to him practically in the ear? Why whisper to him that you were going to San Moisè so he could then come and tell me with a tone that so displeased me?”
Another evening, Andrea was at home nursing a fever and a terrible sore throat when he suddenly learned that the “first-class whoremonger” was on his way to meet Giustiniana. He became so upset that he dashed out of the house, ran across town, and burst into the busy gambling rooms of the Ridotto. “I looked for you everywhere, and I finally found you in the same room where [Il Gobbo] had just been,” he wrote to her angrily and with a good deal of self-pity. The incident, he assured Giustiniana, had “redoubled the flames that were already engulfing my throat.”
Still, Il Gobbo was a lesser irritant than Piero Marcello, the handsome coureur de femmes who was courting Mariettina Corner but also had eyes for Giustiniana. Andrea considered Piero to be frivolous and vain, the sort of young man who would buy a new coat and then “make a ruckus just to attract attention to it.” Piero’s gondola was often moored at the same dock as the Wynnes’. “How appearances can trick one,” Andrea noted, for he was worried people might wrongly assume that Piero was visiting Giustiniana and her sisters, when in fact Piero simply lived nearby. Indeed, some already referred to them as “Piero Marcello’s girls.” Piero not only flirted with Giustiniana, he also needled Andrea in public, wondering aloud whether he and Giustiniana were secretly still seeing each other. The two nearly came to blows over her, as Andrea reported to Giustiniana with more than a hint of braggadocio in this account of their confrontation:
PIERO: Are you jealous of me? Oh … but I have no designs on her. True, when women call me it is hard for me to resist…. But I am your friend, I would not betray you. I stay away from my friends’ women. And if you have the slightest suspicion, I will never see her again.
ANDREA: Who do you think you are, the Terror of the World? Do you really think I’m afraid of losing Giustiniana to you? If she were crazy, like all your previous lovers were, if she wanted your money, … if she had all the weaknesses, all the silliness, all the prejudices of the average woman, if she could not tell the true value of better men, if she were a coquette or worse, then, yes, I probably wouldn’t trust her. But my dear Piero, who do you think you’re dealing with?
Andrea concluded, “I told him these things with my usual straightforwardness, so that after affecting surprise he turned the whole thing into a joke.”
Things did not end there. Days later Andrea saw Piero and Giustiniana talking to each other again. He gave her a stern warning: “Now I speak to you as a husband: I absolutely do not want you to show in public that you know Piero Marcello. I was very sorry that Mariettina, noticing that I was trying to see with whom you were laughing, came over and whispered into my ear: ‘She’s laughing with Piero down there.’”
Even after such a reprimand Andrea would not admit to being the slightest bit jealous:
I’ve told you a hundred times: I don’t forbid you to see Piero out of jealousy…. But I absolutely do not want you to look at him in public or even say hello, all the more so because he affects an equivocal manner that I simply don’t like and that I find insolent in the extreme…. Piero and Momolo are not for you…. Piero frets while Momolo affects his usual mannerisms, both with the same end: to make people believe that there has been at least a little bit of intimacy with all the women they are barely acquainted with. And for this reason the two of them are a real nuisance to young lovers.
